


Presentiments

by icarus_chained



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Fear, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Spies & Secret Agents, Teambuilding, Trust, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-22
Updated: 2012-08-22
Packaged: 2017-11-12 16:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/493513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she had first come to SHIELD, Phil had been the one Natasha feared most. She had been right, if not for the reasons she'd thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Presentiments

**Author's Note:**

> Something of a companion piece to [Expectations](http://archiveofourown.org/works/487448). Again, deals with the immediate impact of **events on the Helicarrier**. Reader's choice as to whether there was a later fix-it.
> 
> Warnings for said events, for implications on Natasha's past, and for Phil being occasionally a scary bastard. Heh.

Phil had been the one she was most afraid of, when she first came to SHIELD. No. Not quite fear. More that Phil had been the one she expected to cost her the most. The small, bland little man, with his suits, and his calm, and his little smile. The very image of a government man, of a soulless automaton of a foreign power, who had her now in his grasp. 

Her handler.

She knew, she had thought, what bland little men did behind closed doors, when they had you in their power. She hadn't feared it. She had been prepared to bear it, until she could turn the tables, and bring the power back into the right hands. It was the job, had always been the job, and for the chance she had been given, she had been prepared to do much, much worse. But she had not relished the thought.

Neither, as it turned out, did he. Inasmuch as he'd had it in the first place. Phil, as she'd come to learn, was not soulless, nor half so bland as he took pains to appear. 

Yes, he was a thing to be feared. But not for the reasons she'd thought.

Phil was ... surprisingly humorous, if you caught him at the right moment, snide little comments that almost slipped past you unnoticed, so subtle were they. She'd noticed that first, found herself blinking in surprise the first few times, frowning faintly into Clint's broad grin, and teasing snap back. Phil had a surprisingly astute, and surprisingly vicious, sense of humour. Ever a dangerous thing, in a man who knew how to use it.

He was realistic, too, she had recognised quickly. He understood the crucial difference between 'orders' and 'capabilities', and was more than capable of pointing them out. He was quietly furious in the face of mistakes, but equally enraged in the face of orders that put his people in what he considered unnecessary danger (though she, like Clint, would sometimes argue with him on the definition of 'unnecessary'). 

And he could, when pushed to it, when the crisis was done and the pieces left to be picked up, launch into the kind of low, clipped, frigidly furious tirade that had even Fury's eyebrows burying themselves in the ceiling, and the head of SHIELD taking a gentle, cautious step backwards. 

She had had that fury pointed at her, a time or two. She had had it wielded in her defense, as many times. She wasn't sure, even still, which she found more frightening.

Phil was also, it turned out, surprisingly capable. Quiet, and unassuming, and prone to letting even fellow agents consistently underestimate him. A fact which Natasha grew to suspect no-one outside herself, Clint, Fury, and possibly Maria, had learned. Phil was utterly unruffled, even in the midst of carnage. Cool, and calm, and capable, no matter the provocation. Exactly the kind of man she had been taught to fear, in an enemy.

Strange, then. As she learned these things, as she realised them about the man who held her life in his hands, the man who sent her into death, the man responsible for pulling her out again before it closed its jaws ... that it was not fear she learned of him. Or not for those reasons, at least.

Because even as she learned his humour, his fury and his capability, even as she learned his humanity, and all the myriad ways in which he was not the soulless automaton, she had learned something else as well. 

That he was not, nor had ever been, her enemy. Not her user, her interrogator, none of many things a handler had meant in her time. He was not her enemy.

He was, instead, the man who would calmly, and with that small, bland little smile of his, walk into an enemy base from which she had failed to free herself, and gently inform her captors that if she was not released, he would blow every last person there, himself and her very much included, to very small pieces. He was the man who would, very gently, and with every respect, tell Fury to go fuck himself sideways, because she was not getting out of bed until her gut was more than loosely glued together. He was the man who would have Fury _listen_. He was the man who would, in that quiet, clipped voice, rip her or Clint verbally apart for the mistake that cost them their own blood, and only look vaguely grim or disappointed for the one that cost them the mission.

He was the man who showed her scraps of collected card, holding them with visible reverence in his hands, explaining to her with unabashed earnestness what they were, and never once letting the thought that she might use them against him keep him from her. A man who trusted her, not only with her job, but with his confidence. Even knowing what she was, what she had done. A man who smiled, as she mocked him gently, and traded barbs as though they were not tipped in venom, and let her see beneath the bland, unruffled exterior, when next to no-one could.

If Clint had been the man to bring her to SHIELD, given her reason to endure it, and Fury the man to make her (almost) believe in it, then Phil was the man who had made her stay, and grant her trust, just a little, in return.

From the beginning, Phil had been the one she was most afraid of. The one she had expected to cost her the most, when she was given over into his hands. The bland little man, with his soft voice, and terrible calm. She had feared him most.

Standing over Clint's slumped, bloodied form, listening to Fury's voice echo hollowly across the carrier ... she knew she had been right. All along, she had been right.

But not, never, for the reasons she'd thought.


End file.
